On Nostalgia

A sentimentality.

I recently found myself discussing this concept with a dear friend.  Just like every other intangible emotion that humans experience, none of us find nostalgia in the same way.  Yours will never be the same as mine.  It can manifest itself in joy or pain; in yearning for, or in regret of, the past.  Most often and logically its for your own past, but sometimes its for someone else or a time or place you never even got to experience.

Despite this, it's always wistful and romantic.  To me, nostalgia is largely a method of the mind in retaining memories, those ones that ever so slowly melt away until you think of them no more.  Your mind remembers (what it thinks to be) every single aspect of a certain situation, time or experience, formulating something so inherently unique to your own inner observations and perceptions that it is irreproducible to no one else but yourself.  That doesn't mean they're gone forever, though.  It usually just means you'll have to wait for that serendipitous moment when something years down the track, when you least expect it, brings its back to the surface. 

I find my nostalgic moments mostly in smells, or in a particular time of year.  Maybe this is because they are static; the same no matter where you experience them. My yearning for periods of time has heightened over the past few years, this perhaps more so as I get further away from them.  Mid-May, when the weather begins to chill, feels like the pangs of loneliness I felt when most of my friends went overseas; September feels like when I returned from Europe to find Spring had sprung in my garden, and I got to begin a new friendship with someone that I had to leave behind before I went away.  When I think of it I also have songs on my iPod that would fit these moulds well.  These notes of nostalgia will stick for a long time before they are replaced.  On the other hand, at the end of this year they might all culminate and neatly file themselves away as something I'll later wistful know as my undergraduate years.  Who knows.

Smells are a little bit different.  They seem to continually re-adjust themselves and build and grow in me.  I've got smells of my Nanna cooking from when I was little that I can feel slowly becoming associated with my Mum in the kitchen on a Saturday morning.  Eventually they'll become mine.  Something as pervasive as cigarette smoke, even; it smells of my time in Europe, of my first boyfriend, of nights in sticky-carpeted pubs and now, of summer nights and carelessness.  The bottle of perfume my parents gave me for my twentieth birthday used to smell so strongly of that balmy night I spent feeling safe in a dark cinema.  Sometimes it still does, but now it also smells of special occasions and enhanced confidence.

Now I read back on my words and I try as hard as I can to feel something, anything; that pull deep in my centre that used to hurt when my eyes glazed over them and made me ache for days.  It's still there now, that ache I wanted forever to end, but now it's different; it's more unsure, almost like a clock-hand paused in the middle of a second.

When I read over things I have written, however, I don't experience this same sense of feeling.  I probably won't when I read over this piece either.  I'm not sure why this is; the only thing I can possibly think of is that the act of writing enables you to expel something palpable for later on.  You've taken the physical steps to get it out into the open and it isn't just caught in your mind.  I wrote the above paragraph a few weeks ago on a scrap of paper, and there are only some things in it now that I can still relate to.  The warmth and the haze of the memory is still there.  Nostalgia, though, often creeps up on you and bursts itself open through a prompt you didn't even know existed.

Lately I've found myself pausing when I enter this contemplative mood.  Something in my mind has been wanting to turn it off.  Maybe it's for want of actually living in the present, being consciously thankful for what I have now, or not dwelling on the past.  But I've also realised all of these things are the polar opposite to what it means to be nostalgic.  After all of this, nostalgia isn't something just for dreamers, or wishful thinkers, or even idealists.  It's something that makes us human, and reminds us so when we forget.

outlines

2 Alifangs Andelbow

4 Clara Balzary 

y o u c a n b e a l i v e a n d u n c o n s c i o u s

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cusp |kʌsp|noun1 a pointed end where two curves meet, in particular;• Architecture a projecting point between small arcs in Gothic tracery.• a cone-shaped prominence on the surface of a tooth, esp. of a molar or premolar.• Anatomy a pocket or fold in the wall of the heart or a major blood vessel that fills and distends if the blood flows backward, so forming part of a valve.• Mathematics a point at which the direction of a curve is abruptly reversed.• each of the pointed ends of a crescent, esp. of the moon.• figurative a point between two different situations or states, when a person or thing is poised between the two or just about to move from one to the other.
I'd say this is all about right, right about now.

Show Me

Look! While this is something a little different from me, considering I empty the entire contents of my bag onto my bed every day when I get home I thought I might as well show you what's inside.  That and also I'm really good at not doing homework when it's sunny and it's Sunday.

The culprit in question: my black Longchamp Le Pliage shopping bag.  I bought her just over two years ago on an airport stopover on my way to Italy; she's reliable, goes with everything and is just gorgeous.  I'm sad to say she's on her last legs though (I've already had to stitch up the corners twice) and she's not as shiny as she used to be.  I'm on the hunt for something new, suggestions welcome.

Very vital necessities which are pretty self explanatory; keys, lip balm, earphones.  The lip balm (Delipscious in Berry Crush from The Body Shop: tacky name, tacky packaging, but so so good) is the only one I've found so far that vaguely hides my blue lips when I'm cold!  The Alessi key ring is a recent purchase to myself after getting my first grown-up job; the two lonely keys on it open my house and the office - accurate reflection of my life at the moment. (Just realised my iPhone should be here too but it took the snaps!)

My mum bought me my Country Road wallet when I was 15. Patent and shiny, so shiny.  On its last legs too but working the distance in keeping me organised!

Always ALWAYS in my bag is my Moleskine yearly diary and three pens of the same kind: ink Uniballs in blue and red and an Artline black fineliner in 0.3 (don't know what 0.4 is doing in this picture, get out).  I will never replace pen and paper for my iPhone when it comes to being organised or using a calendar.  Never.  The other notebook is my creative one for writing/drawing/thoughts etc etc. It's usually a small tan Moleskine but this colourful one was given to me by someone very lovely.

This one's explanatory: Apple, Scarf, Water bottle. I get hungry, I get cold, I get thirsty. Worthy of a photo.

Miscellaneous-but-necessary things. I often go wandering around the place by myself so the disposable camera is for awesome things that catch my eye, or when I feel like being extra creative and I've dedicated an afternoon to snapz but don't have enough money to fill up my Holga with proper film.  The Aesop bag holds my lunch (enviro conscious 'n stuff).  The little Bloom case carries all obligatory girly things such as Papaw (don't need to say anything about that gem), Hemp Hand Protector and Mineral Blotting Tissues from The Body Shop (saviours for dry hands and 3pm shiny face) and Aesop Resurrection Rinse-Free Hand Wash (I eat apples a lot, what can I say). 

After all of this, I realised the book I'm reading at the moment is missing. Whatever it is is usually amongst all this stuff too.  If you were wondering right now it's The Communist Manifesto. Don't judge my nerdishness. xx

ghosts and lovers

bones

Your face split itself down the middle and was sliding away

The forehead, and then the eyes

The nose cracking under slow pressure

Uncontrolled

Yet furiously slow.

With consciousness waning 

The blurriness hazing over and over

Naive and restful

And over and over 

Everything was there, but then gone

Returning to the fold.